Stress

I've been thinking a lot about stress lately. It's one of those things that you need in your life, but in balance. If you don't get enough, you're bored. If you get too much, you have a nervous breakdown. Like friction...without it, we'd all slip right off the face of the earth. With too much, we'd be rooted to the spot our entire lives. And that would be kinda stressful, huh?

I can't decide whether I'm prone to get stressed out easily or not. I put a lot of effort into avoiding stressful situations, like malls at Christmastime and driving in bad weather. And the stress I can't avoid, like the kind I get at work, well, some days I deal with it better than other days.

Hormones do not help.

What stresses me is being in situations I can't get out of if I want or need to. Like being at a business function, or even a family function, and having to stay there, whether it's because you're being paid to be there, or because it would be rude to leave too early. I generally try my best to avoid being in situations like that in the first place, but sometimes you just have no choice. At those times, I can get to a point where I almost feel like I'm having a mild panic attack.

I also get very stressed when I have so much to do that I don't think I'm going to get it done in time. Missing a deadline, for me, would be like missing my shot if a bull rhino was charging me and all I could do to save myself is drill him right between the eyes. If I miss.... splat. I live by deadlines at work. We have a deadline every day...often more than one. Multiple projects going on all the time. Feeling like I can't get everything done by its respective deadline is probably the second most horrifyingly stressful thing I can experience.

The only thing that's worse is when my equipment doesn't work properly when I'm on one of those deadlines. And I'm always on one of those deadlines. When the program keeps crashing, or the computer won't boot or the network disconnects me and won't let me back on. That's when I lose it. It's every one of my worst stressors all rolled into one: can't control the situation, can't get out of the situation, can't meet my deadlines and can't get my equipment to work.

Those are the moments, thankfully always happening when I'm alone at the office where I will either slam my hand down on the desk so hard it hurts for an hour and scream obscenities at the top of my lungs...or I'll let out a strangled yell, put my hands to my head and start to cry.

Those are bad moments. They make me feel hopeless, like I'll never get out of the situation and everything's fucking up and everyone is going to be mad at me.

With time, I've begun to be able to get myself under control a little better when these moments hit. I am a little more philosophical, I have a little more perspective. I can, when I've calmed down a little, step back a bit and have a look at the situation and either figure out a way to fix it or decide that if I can't do anything about it, it'll just have to wait to be fixed when someone's around who can fix it.

Getting to that point though? That's a bitch.